Is Vivaldi Still the Soundtrack of the Seasons?

Podcast: Intelligence Squared
Host: Dr. Leah Broad
Guest: Dr. Hannah French
Release Date: November 23, 2025

Overview

This episode explores Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and its continuing resonance as both a cultural touchstone and a lens through which to experience seasonality in music and everyday life. Dr. Hannah French, musicologist and author of The Rolling Year: Listening to the Seasons with Vivaldi, joins Dr. Leah Broad to discuss the origins, context, symbolism, and enduring power of Vivaldi’s masterpiece. The conversation ranges from Vivaldi’s world and biography to contemporary perspectives on “seasonal listening” and why this centuries-old work remains relevant today.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Write About Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?

• Accidental Focus: Dr. French wanted to write about “seasonal listening”—choosing music appropriate to time and season—but soon realized The Four Seasons was the “perfect gateway” (04:50–05:26).
• Quote:

  “I didn’t mean to write a book about Vivaldi.... I was going to write a book about seasonality and about this idea of seasonal listening, and I have done. But it came from radio... and the more I looked at it, the more I realized that Vivaldi's Four Seasons was the perfect gateway.”—Dr. Hannah French (04:43)

2. What Is “Seasonal Listening”?

• “Seasonal listening” involves aligning music choices with time of year or occasion—like Christmas carols in December or festival music in summer (05:29–07:07).
• It can be deeply personal, based on memories and rituals, or historically informed, considering when music was written and first performed.

3. Vivaldi’s Life and Context

• At age 41, Vivaldi, already established in Venice, took a post in Mantua (07:15–09:25).
• At the Pietà (a Venetian orphanage for girls), Vivaldi led an all-female orchestra of astonishing skill—often overlooked as “not an orchestra of children, [but] women of all ages” (09:25–11:44).
• Memorable Description:

  "They would take on a surname based on the instrument that they played or the voice part that they had. And Vivaldi came in to teach them.... These women—because they stayed, some until their 90s, they lived in the Pietà."—Dr. French (10:37)

4. The Research Process: Living the Seasons

• Dr. French wrote the manuscript over a year, experiencing the music and research “in step with the year”—traveling, tasting dishes, and attending festivals Vivaldi might have known (11:51–13:19).
• Sensory immersion: understanding The Four Seasons meant bird-watching, sampling seasonal foods, and visiting relevant historical sites.

5. Birds, Nature, and Vivaldi’s Sonic Realism

• Birds play explicit and symbolic roles—named and unnamed—especially in Spring and Summer (13:19–16:52).
• Vivaldi’s musical “casting” of birds (e.g., the sinister cuckoo) reflects complex, sometimes brutal realities, not merely pastoral ideals.

6. Place and The Imagination of Nature

• Although tied to Venice, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was more likely born from Mantua, with its rural views and the court’s artistic milieu (16:52–19:58).
• Visual and architectural cues (like the “Hall of Months” and frescoes of the Four Seasons in Mantua’s Ducal Palace) may have directly inspired the music (28:02–32:23).

7. The Uniqueness and Psychological Depth of The Four Seasons

• Vivaldi combined human feeling with nature, moving beyond allegory to psychological drama—fear, relief, suffering, and joy—embodied in music (20:19–22:27).

8. The Seasons in Detail

Summer:

• Not idyllic, but wrought with “anger” and anxiety—a summer storm that could mean starvation (22:27–27:23).
• Vivaldi’s own experience of illness (possibly asthma or Eisenmenger syndrome) may be reflected in the suffocating music.
• Quote:

  “The middle movement of Summer rumbles with thunder.... The more you live with that, the more you think, wow, this is somebody who is potentially struggling to breathe, who has to keep going, who's been taken by surprise by the weather, who's really suffering.”—Dr. French (25:37)

Autumn:

• Centered on harvest and celebration (“a lot of drunkenness”), raising questions about performance (is the soloist hammed up as “drunk”?). The music is playful but physically difficult for performers just coming out of the exhausting Summer concerto (36:34–43:07).
• The final movement depicts the hunt—“the only moment where we come across death”—full of poignancy and interpretative challenge.

Winter:

• Rooted in Venetian reality: the catastrophic (and historically accurate) freezing of the lagoon, which brought terror and hardship (44:39–47:36).
• Only in the very end of Winter does joy reappear, with Carnival as a glimmer of hope.

9. Humans and Nature: Realism, Not Pastoral Harmony

• The relationship between humanity and the natural world is depicted as “dynamic and very real,” embracing both brutality and celebration, never simply harmonious (47:36–50:49).
• The music's realism—like Rosalba Carriera’s portraits hinting at actual faces—gives the work its enduring power.

10. The Four Seasons in the Modern Imagination

• The music serves as a gateway to understanding our own place in nature and the passage of time.
• There's a risk it becomes pure nostalgia (“twee”), but, as Dr. French says, “they are a reminder of how powerful nature is and how we have to respect it and learn to live with it and alongside it” (50:57–52:20).
• Contemporary reimaginings—such as Ayanna Witter Johnson’s “Black Star March”—draw from Vivaldi’s template but respond to modern realities (52:20–54:41).

11. Personal Connections and “Seasonal” Music Today

• Writing the book transformed Dr. French’s relationship to the piece, embedding memory and physical sensation—“I got very used to listening endlessly to whichever season in whichever season...” (54:41–58:06).
• Food analogies: likening Vivaldi’s work to eating a “Four Seasons pizza”—one might prefer to savor each part in its time, not all at once (55:00–58:06).
• Seasonal listening isn’t limited to Vivaldi: works like Handel’s Water Music (for summer) or Lully’s music for Versailles in May reinforce how time, place, and music intersect (58:14–60:39).

Notable Quotes and Timestamps

• “Can I be really honest? I didn’t mean to write a book about Vivaldi.... It came from radio and from presenting the breakfast show in music that's so specific to a day and a time...”
  —Hannah French (04:43–05:26)

• “These were the birds that they heard. They didn't have to go to a nature reserve to experience them. These were the birds that were around town in Venice and Mantua in his day.”
  —Hannah French (16:29)

• “The more the music made sense.... I don't suppose that Vivaldi was a really keen birder, but...the more I learned about [the cuckoo], the more the music made sense.”
  —Hannah French (16:36)

• “Vivaldi’s summer is heading in a straight line for one of the worst possible storms.... There’s just no deviation... if your crops failed, your family didn’t eat.”
  —Hannah French (22:52)

• “The number of times that we might say, ‘Oh, I had to pull the car over just to hear the end of that,’ or ‘I had to just stop folding the washing and listen to what was on the radio...’ If we can create more of those moments in our day, then...we did have a little reset.”
  —Hannah French (61:58)

Important Segments (Timestamps)

• 04:43 – The accidental genesis of the book
• 07:15 – Vivaldi’s career context at the Pietà and move to Mantua
• 13:30 – How birds inform the music’s realism
• 16:59 – Venice vs. Mantua as inspirational sources; the significance of Mantua’s court and architecture
• 22:27–27:23 – Summer: psychological, physical, and environmental dangers
• 28:02–32:23 – Discovering the “right place” and context in Mantua
• 36:34–43:07 – Autumn: music, celebration, intoxication, and death
• 44:54 – Winter: catastrophic Venetian winters and the contrasts of joy and hardship
• 47:44–50:49 – The realism of human-nature interaction
• 52:20–54:41 – Modern reimaginings and changing relationships to nature
• 58:06–62:57 – Recommendations for seasonal listening; benefits of mindfulness through music

Closing Thoughts

Dr. Hannah French urges listeners to rediscover the practice of mindful, seasonal listening. Music like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons connects us daily, bodily, and emotionally to time, place, and the realities of nature—whether in the 18th century or today. The episode closes with encouragement to build intentional, musical pauses into the rhythm of contemporary life.

For more from Dr. Hannah French, read her book The Rolling Year: Listening to the Seasons with Vivaldi.